A naïve young teacher gets schooled on the social order by a disillusioned older professor in Zanussi's powerful parable of blending in, selling out, and sucking up. Closer to his students than his fellow professors, Jaroslaw studies language, but his colleague Jakub's interest in reptilian slime may be better preparation for survival in the academic (and political) order. “The concept of justice is rarely found in science,” drolly responds Jakub to one of Jaroslaw's moral quandaries, triggering a series of dialogues on conflict, morality, and the benefits of idealism. Zanussi's great talent is to turn philosophical debates into the most absorbing of dramas; a former physicist and mathematician, he stages intellectual dialogue like action scenes, a John Woo for the philosophy set. As a parable of a morally bankrupt society, or as a tool to trigger thought, this embittered, wry masterpiece has little equal, and was a surprise hit in Poland, with audiences flocking towards a film that embraced and interrogated the conflicts that ruled their lives.